Dear ICIS Members and Friends,

Welcome to the ICIS newsletter! Thank you to Amy Chastain and Nasima Yamchi for doing a great job editing their inaugural issue.

Thank you also to those of you who presented at and participated in this year’s convention in Philadelphia and to those who have been working hard over the past few months undertaking training and reviewing the proposals for Dallas 2013.

Philadelphia 2012 was a great success for ICIS. In addition to our member presentations, we had a very well-attended Academic Session about working with identity to deepen intercultural and language teaching, and three InterSections with the EFL, CALL, and ESP Interest Sections. At our open business meeting, we had the opportunity to welcome some new members to our interest section and had a lively discussion about future topics for ICIS to explore. The minutes of this meeting will soon be available on our community site. Our meeting was followed by a fun evening out at the SoleFood Lounge in Downtown Philly.

As many of you know, planning is well under way for Dallas 2013. ICIS has been able to accept 32 sessions. The reviewing process is now almost complete, and members will find out if their proposals have been accepted at the beginning of October. ICIS is working with the SLW and SR Interest Sections this year to create InterSections discussing intercultural rhetoric in teaching writing and expanding non-Western voices in TESOL.

In other news, over the past year ICIS has been working on updating its governing rules and this process is now complete. Our primary members voted on changes that reflect the increasing importance of the Internet in our interactions as ICIS members, and formalized the position of our community manager as an appointed steering committee member. The new governing rules are available on our community site. The community site continues to develop and the leadership team thanks everyone who has participated in the discussions on that site and asks for your continued engagement to help build a stronger ICIS. Thanks also to Chris Spackman, our community manager, for encouraging participation and posting interesting topics for discussion. The ICIS community site can be accessed easily from the home page of the fabulous newly designedTESOL Web site. For those of you who prefer to connect via Facebook, visit our growing Facebook page.

As many of us are beginning to wind down our summer holiday and think about the upcoming fall semester, I’d like to encourage you to also think about becoming more involved with ICIS. Our annual elections will be taking place in the fall; look out for a call for nominations on the ICIS e-list.

I wish you all a relaxing end to your holiday, and an enjoyable and productive start to your new semester!